side, and grasps the other's arm so tightly
that Brigitta screams. "Brigitta, the marchesa saw me. She saw me
lying there, but she never stopped nor turned her head. I lay on the
stones, sick and very sore, till a neighbor, Antonio the carpenter,
who works in the little square, a good lad, picked me up and carried
me home."

As she speaks, Carlotta's eyes glitter like a serpent's. She shakes
all over.

"Lord have mercy!" exclaims Brigitta, looking hard at her; "that was
bad!" Carlotta was over eighty; her face was like tanned leather, her
skin loose and shriveled; a handful of gray hair grew on the top of
her head, and was twisted up with a silver pin. Brigitta was also of a
goodly age, but younger than Carlotta, fat and portly, and round as
a barrel. She was pitted by the small-pox, and had but one eye; but,
being a widow, and well-to-do in the world, is not without certain
pretensions. She wears a yellow petticoat and a jacket trimmed with
black lace. In her hair, black and frizzly as a negro's, a rose
is stuck on one side.--The hair had been dressed that morning by a
barber, to whom she paid five francs a month for this adornment.--Some
rows of dirty seed-pearl are fastened round her fat throat; long gold
ear-rings bob in her ears, and in her hand is a bright paper fan, with
which she never ceases fanning herself.

"She's never spent so much as a penny at my shop," Carlotta goes on to
say. "Not a penny. She'd not spare a flask of wine to a beggar
dying at her door. Stuck-up old devil! But she's ruined, ruined with
lawsuits. Ruined, I say. Ha! ha! Her time will come."

Finding Carlotta wearisome, Brigitta's one eye has again wandered off
to the man with the red waistcoat. Carlotta sees this, watching her
out of her deep-set, glassy eyes. Speak Carlotta will, and Brigitta
shall listen, she was determined.

"I could tell you things"--she lowers her voice and speaks into the
other's ear--"things--horrors--about Casa Guinigi!"

Brigitta starts. "Gracious! You frighten me! What things?"

"Ah, things that would make your hair stand on end. It is I who say
it," and Carlotta snaps her fingers and nods.

"_You_ know things, Carlotta? You pretend to know what happens in Casa
Guinigi? Nonsense! You are mad!"

"Am I?" retorts the other. "We shall see. Who wins boasts. I'm not so
mad, anyhow, as the marchesa, who shuts up her palace on the festival,
and offends St. Nicodemus and all the saints and martyrs," and
Carlot